Highwood Water Woes Tied To Tank Leak

June 28, 1994|By Michael Kates, Tribune Staff Writer.

State environmental officials say a leak in a nearby underground tank may have caused the contamination of the Highwood water supply that sent residents scurrying for bottled water over the weekend and has forced the town to buy water from Highland Park.

The contaminant was identified as BETX, or benzene ethylbenzene toluene xylene, which is often a component of petroleum products, said Joan Muraro, a spokeswoman for the Illinois Environmental Protection Agency.

The levels of BETX were not high enough to warrant a public health alert, Muraro said.

Officials speculate that recent heavy rains may have pushed BETX into a sump area of the Highwood Water Plant, 4 Walker Ave. There is usually a sump pump at work in that area, but it was either broken or had already been taken out for repairs, Muraro said.

The highest levels of BETX were discovered in the "raw water" well, where water from Lake Michigan first enters the treatment plant, said Steve Verseman, a city engineer with the Crystal Lake consulting firm of Baxter & Woodman, which works for Highwood.

Water travels from the raw well through a filtration system and is pumped to the community, officials explained.

Highwood has hired a private contractor, SET Environmental Inc. of Bridgeview, to do the waterworks cleanup, Verseman said.

Verseman cautioned that it still is not known how the contaminant entered the system.

Crews began digging near the water plant late Monday morning, but had not found anything by the end of the day, Verseman said.

Usually, storage tanks are buried 2 to 4 feet below the surface, but the tank that crews are seeking may be deeper than that, Verseman said. Work is scheduled to resume Tuesday morning.

If the leaking tank is found quickly and the necessary permits are approved by the state fire marshal, the cleanup should take a week or two, Verseman said.

The contamination was discovered Saturday morning by residents, who complained to police of foul-smelling and foul-tasting water. The state EPA took water samples, and the water plant was shut down.

The town also has imposed an outside water-usage ban that will remain in effect indefinitely, until Highwood is using its own water again.

Until then, Highwood will rely on water it buys from Highland Park. The two municipalities have an intergovernmental agreement that says if one town is having an emergency, the other will sell it water.

The cost of the waterworks cleanup cannot be estimated until the source of the problem is identified, said Highwood Mayor John Sirotti.

Although the health threat appears minimal, the Highwood case is an example of a potential ecological disaster underground, state EPA officials say.

There are at least 80,000 underground storage tanks in Illinois, and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency estimates that 25 percent of these have leaked, are leaking or will leak, said Heather Nifong, a spokeswoman for the leaking underground storage tanks division of the Illinois EPA.

In Lake County, there have been 625 reported "releases," or leaks, reported since the state EPA first started monitoring them in 1987, Nifong said. Of those leaks, 114 occurred in Waukegan and three in Highwood.